Guillermo del Toro Working on Dark Universe… Yeah, Basically The 90s Vertigo Comics Movie

Update, 6:40 a.m.: The video after the jump is fixed. What can I say? That Benzedrine’s a hell of a drug.

Guillermo del Toro is finishing up work on Pacific Rim, which will be in theaters in July. And since between movies and books and comics, he seems like a guy who likes to keep busy… you know, in the sense that a methamphetamine addict like to occupy the day by disassembling the television in an attempt to find parts to improve the AK-47 they use to keep the Goddamned bugs away.

Which, as analogies go, certainly is one, but my point is, del Toro probably has another project in mind. And it seems that he does. Is it the adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness that del Toro was working on before the project went tits up? Well, apparently maybe; supposedly he thinks he can get one more bite at that apple, hard R rating and ridiculous budget or no:

“I’m going to try it one more time. Once more into the dark abyss,” he laughed. “We’re gonna do a big presentation of the project again at the start of the year and see if any [studio’s] interested.” And yes, Tom Cruise is still game to be on board if they can find a home for it. “Yeah, Tom is still attached. I think it would be so fantastic to make it with him. He’s been such a great ally of the project.”

Okay, that’s pretty good news… certainly better than the news about the Hulk TV show that del Toro was supposedly working on a few months ago:

“After ‘The Avengers’ there’s been complete radio silence,” he said. “I had one more meeting after ‘Avengers’ with Jeph Loeb from Marvel and he said, ‘We’re working on it, we’re waiting for a writer,’ he gave me the name of the writer and their resume and I said, ‘That sounds great, let’s wait for him’ because we had delivered a teleplay and I haven’t heard since then.”

So yeah, those sound pretty good… but that’s not the good shit. The good shit is that del Toro is apparently working on a project with Warner Bros. A movie including Swamp Thing, John Constantine, Zatanna, Etrigan… pretty much all of the cast of Justice League Dark. And it’s actually in preproduction, with a writer attached and everything.

The Most Interesting One-Word Marvel Now Teaser In The World: “XX” By Brian Wood and Olivier Coipel

Wolverine calls him the best there is at what he does.

Cyclops believes that he is a dick.

It took Emma Frost longer to read his mind than it did for her to read Infinite Jest.

Hank McCoy calls him a beast.

He is the master of magnetism… according to Eric Lenshurr.

He is… the most interesting man in – ah, screw it; Marvel’s released another one-word teaser poster, and it says “XX.” Sure, I could have made a classy observation like “XX” is the chromosonal sequence for women, but there was a Dos Equis beer joke there, and I am only a man. A weak man. A weak man with a drinking problem. It’s pretty much all I can think about. It’s quite serious.

Right, the comic book. You can check the teaser after the jump.

One Person Really Can Make A Difference – Every Stan Lee Marvel Movie Appearance. Ever.

We noted with enthusiasm the observance of Stan Lee’s birthday shortly before the start of the new year. In honor of this momentous occasion, the folks over at I Heart Chaos found a video by YouTube user rogerio16juni1998 that is a montage of all Stan’s appearances in Marvel movies since 1989’s The Trial of the Incredible Hulk. My favorite moment in the video is probably at 2:39, where Stan arrives as himself at the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm…and finds he’s not on the guest list.

Here’s to more Stan Lee cameos this year in Iron Man 3 and Thor 2, as well as next year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Excelsior!

Your Mother’s A Tracer

If you’re a regular reader of Crisis On Infinite Midlives, you might notice a few changes to the look. That’s because we’ve upgraded the visual engine behind the site – for the first time since we launched in September, 2011 – and go figure: there have been a million little changes under the hood.

So we’ve spent hours and hours banging on the code behind the scenes, and not being Web developers, we have learned to use the phrase “CSS” as the dirtiest of curse words. But we think we have things looking the way they should.

So please take a look around and see how things look! The angry, drunken writing hasn’t changed, but the look’s a bit different… and if we missed something or if something’s egregiously broken, please let us know in the comments or via our contact form. You will know we received your message when you hear the faint howls of anguish.

God Help Us, Twin Peaks Might Come Back After All

Late last week, there was a rumor going around the Internet that David Lynch had had a meeting with NBC executives to relaunch Twin Peaks. The rumor was that Lynch was planning to set the new series twenty-something years after the original series final episode (which aired on June 10, 1991), with Bob still trapped in Dale Cooper’s body, with as many actors and actresses from the original series that he possibly could… and despite the fact that I am about the biggest Twin Peaks fan you’ve ever met, up to and including being one of the only two people I know who paid to see Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in the theater (the other being the poor girl who had never seen Twin Peaks that I dragged to the flick), I didn’t mention it here because the story was obviously bullshit. Because it looks like the original rumor came from a 4Chan posting, and therefore without attached pictures of Lynch and his proposal, it must be considered suspect since it does not involve cats.

And that was a good choice, since it turns out that original rumor was, in fact, bullshit. Twin Peaks Co-Producer Mark Frost debunked the whole story on Twitter:

Dear Internet: You are very good at spreading rumors. Truth is more valuable and much harder to come by. Sincerely yours, @mfrost11

— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) January 2, 2013

So that’s it. Game over. Nothing to see here. Right?

Well, kinda.

Five In One, Or: No One Here Gets Out Alive: Fatale #11 Review

Most of the time, there’s only really two reasons that I can give people to pick up Fatale, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, on an issue-by-issue basis rather than the trades. The first is that, even though up until now the stories in Fatale have been hugely decompressed, and arguably best read in one sitting as in a trade paperback reprint, buying individuals comics helps keep titles going and give you the chance to actually get a trade. But the second is the backmatter: essays by Jess Nevens- the guy who does the annotations for Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes – about the pulp horror stories, authors and magazines that form the influence of Fatale.

Yeah, well, forget all that shit, because neither one of them is true about Fatale #11. There is no backmatter in this issue, due to the vagaries of the holiday publishing schedule, and this issue isn’t really part of a long arc. Oh sure, the story features Josephine, the haunted femme fatale who makes men do anything she wants for some as-yet unknown reasons (although that rack probably helps, am I right, fellas? Hello? Is this thing on?), and we get to see Alfred Ravenscroft, the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired author of Elder Gods-style tales who has been a presence throughout the book until now, but for the most part, this issue is a one-and-done about how those two characters meet for the first time. And while it helps to know who these characters in order to fully enjoy the story, for once, it’s not utterly necessary. If you’ve been missing Fatale, this issue is a reasonable place to jump in for short money and get to know Josephine, her power and how she effects people, and some of the underpinnings of the greater story at large.

So if you’ve had any interest in checking out Fatale but haven’t gotten in on the ground floor, this is as good a place to give it a shot as any… but does that mean it’s any good?

Daily Bummer: Steve Gerber on Simon And Shuster, And How To Help Peter David

It will be a quiet day here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, as most of our contributors will be meeting us shortly to participate in a team building exercise. This will involve being at the bar next to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop building my own teams by cutting and pasting panels from different new releases, meaning that, if all goes well, our local SWAT Team will have the chance to learn to work together as a closer unit.

So just a couple of quick things today: first off, 20th Century Danny Boy has just republished an article, initially written for Rolling Stone by Howard The Duck creator Steve Gerber back in the mid-70s, about the fall into destitution of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster prior to Warner Bros. making the deal to pay them an annual pension for life… not for any legal reasons, but to try and win a PR victory despite making millions off a character that Siegel and Shuster created back in the 30s and sold for $130.

Rolling Stone never published the article, but Gerber updated it in the mid-80s and published it in Wap, a fanzine run at the time by Gerber, Frank Miller and Steven Grant, and this is the first time it’s seen the light of day since then. It’s a pretty harrowing story about how the big comic publishers routinely fucked and burned most of the creators who invented the characters we still read and love to this day, and how many of them died penniless, despite publishers making millions off of their creations (and don’t think it doesn’t still happen on some level; ask Ed Brubaker how much input he had over the movie script for The Winter Soldier). It’s one hell of an article, somewhat disturbing, and yet another reason why I’m perfectly happy to be sitting on the sidelines writing about comics rather than actually writing them. Well, that and my utter lack of talent in writing plot, story or characterization.

And in the spirit of helping out comic creators going through a bad patch: we reported earlier this week that X-Factor, Captain Marvel, Incredible Hulk and Star Trek writer Peter David had suffered a stroke while on vacation in Florida. David’s wife Kathleen has been posting daily updates on his condition on David’s Web site, and yesterday she posted a way for fans to help him out with, despite his having health insurance, what will probably be some not insubstantial co-payments:

J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, And Others To Be Rumored As Working On New Dr. Who Project

Hypable posted speculation this morning that J.K. Rowling may be involved in an upcoming Dr. Who short story anthology, which will begin as a publication of individual “eshorts” starting on January 23, according to the BBC press release. Although Stephen Moffat is not commenting on the project, publisher Juliet Matthews reports:

We are delighted to have 11 sensational children’s authors involved in the series, all bringing an individual style, imagination and interpretation to their eshort tribute to The Doctor. This is a who’s who of children’s fiction coming together to celebrate the much-loved Doctor Who.

I’m too out of touch with children’s fiction these days to have any idea what constitutes a “who’s who”; I can’t imagine they are digging up the corpse of Lewis Carroll for this project. However, Bleeding Cool thinks they may have found evidence of the possibility of Neil Gaiman’s involvement based on this tweet from this morning:

Rewatching lots of old YouTube clips for A Project. I’d forgotten how much I loved Curse of the Fatal Death j.mp/133F6RZ#drwho

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 4, 2013

So, who knows? Either way, Dr. Who and children’s literature fans will have a field day making guesses and placing bets. The first of the authors for this series will be revealed on January 7. I don’t suppose there’s a chance that they’d get the Go The Fuck To Sleep guy involved, would they? Now that would be an interesting take on Dr. Who, especially if they got Samuel L. Jackson to read it.

Snide Commentary

The issue with site comments I mentioned the other day has finally been fixed, tested and implemented (thanks to Trebuchet for the assist). We appreciate your patience. We only have a few regular commenters here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, but they all complained to a one when things went tits up, so thanks for hanging in while we found a solution.

One upside of our new anti-spam solution? You shouldn’t have to deal with CAPTCHAs when commenting anymore. First-time commenters will still go into moderation as they always have, but the only time you will be forced to read something to prove your humanity will be if, in your comment, you really want to address the parallels between Doctor Octopus’s newfound youth and, say, the benefits of h3rb@l v1@gr@. And if that’s the case, I don’t think even a successful CAPTCHA is real evidence that you are human.

So thanks again for your patience. We know that you have a choice when it comes to drunkards spouting off about comic books, and we thank you for choosing Crisis On Infinite Midlives.

Doesn’t Suck: Morbius The Living Vampire #1 Review

When I was a kid in the early, mid 1970s, I had an unreasonable phobia of vampires. During the mid 1990s, I had grown sick of watching Superman die and Spider-Man get cloned, so I tuned out of mainstream superhero fare in favor of Vertigo comics, and therefore missed Marvel’s era of Midnight Sons. In the mid 2000s, I never got caught up in the whole Twilight, sparkly vampire craze because I am a grown man who prefers the company of women.

The point is that, despite years of reading comics, I have no real personal history with the character of Morbius, The Living Vampire. Sure, I came across him a few times in Marvel Tales reprints and (I think) in one of those giant-sized The Spectacular Spider-Man Treasury Editions, but for the most part, for me, Morbius was one of those dingbats who showed up in Spider-Man now and again, wearing that stupid circus jumpsuit with the batwing armpits and lapels that would make John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever weep like someone gave him a peek at his career between 1983 and 1994.

So I didn’t have a hell of a lot of anticipation for Morbius The Living Vampire #1, written by Joe Keatinge and drawn by Richard Elson; in fact, Amanda grabbed it as part of her pulls at our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to query the playing customers if they have anyone into whom they’d like me to drive my stake.  But she left it in the bathroom, so I gave it a shot, expecting what I vaguely remembered from the character back in the day (having, honestly, missed his star turn in The Amazing Spider-Man #699.1 last month due to holiday hecticness (Rob: You misspelled “drunken blackout.” –Amanda)): a mopey dipshit living in a sewer lab, howling at the walls at how tortured he is, punctuated by a fight with some supervillain whose head would, by law of averages, be on fire.

But it turns out it’s not like that at all. Instead, it’s a book about a vampire, but one that isn’t obsessed with vampires. Instead, it’s a surprisingly light – and not in a bad way – story about a guy who’s down on his luck and trying to navigate a rough situation. And that guy happens to be a vampire. And he, and the book as a whole, have a surprising sense of humor for a dude who used to run with Ghost Rider and eat rats. It’s a 21st century vampire story that is less The Vampire Diaries and more Zombieland, and it is a hell of a lot more fun than you’d think.